PPC on Facebook & LinkedIn

Social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have proven they can bring in massive audiences due to their popularity with internet users. The publicity and hype behind social networking sites may have tickled your advertising curiosity. If so please read on….

As Facebook & LinkedIn base their pricing on a Pay Per Click or cost per thousand model you may affiliated their advertising models to be similar to that of Google or Yahoo. However this would be an easy mistake to make. There are a few vital differences that you will need to be aware of if you do choose to expand your advertising reach via these sites.

Google and Yahoo operate on a search basis. This means that your ads will appear when users search using keywords that trigger your ads. This is an effective model because it means your ads will be showing to large qualified audiences and you can target customers in all parts of the buying cycle if you are clever with your keywords.

This is not the same model used by social networking sites. These sites operate on their user’s information. Advertising on social networking sites involves targeting your ads to very specific user demographics rather than users search queries. The choice of your demographics can be as large or as small as you want and are targeted to such variables as location, gender, age, education and employment sector.

To summarise, it is worth comparing advertisings on Facebook and LinkedIn to that of placement advertising. The users are not actively searching like on Google or Yahoo, ads are being viewed by qualified prospective customers based on the demographic controls selected.

As an afterthought, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the search engines implemented demographic targeting alongside their search advertising in the future as they attain the information they need by the service they offer.

Network Intellect is a performance based digital consultancy, if you require any advice on your online marketing we have a team of digital consultants waiting to help.